A/N: As promised, I am trying to get this chapter cranked out quickly to update the story by the time I leave on vacation! I hope you guys like it!

Disclaimer: For, like, the eighth time, I do not own House and I do not own Scars.

Here we go, chapter eight!

"Alright Cameron, we're going to do an exam to make sure there's nothing wrong with you, okay?" Dr. Kutner told the child in a way that he hoped would placate the small, brunette boy.

"But, isn't that why I'm here? Something is wrong with me, so you're looking for what is wrong, not checking to make sure nothing's wrong?" the little boy inquired of Kutner. Looking down on him, Kutner smiled at the boy's intelligence. "I guess you are right, but I don't think we'll find anything too wrong right now. Can I ask you to step out?" Kutner asked the father, who was jabbing on his cell phone, checking his watch, and looking like he was ready to get out of there. Waiting for his dad to end his call, little Cameron looked up at Kutner and gave a "typical-dad" shrug and stuck his fingers back into his mouth, looking away. After a few "why's" and "he's-my-son's" later, the father left the room, irritatedly dialing another number on his phone.

"Dad always busy like that?" the Indian doctor asked the little boy as he took off his gown. The child just shrugged and nodded. Kutner noticed him biting his lip again and wondered if House was right, that maybe the father was a type of trigger for him. "How is everything at home, Cameron?" Kutner asked, trying to find an answer while not scaring the boy.

"Okay," he rasped out before adding on at his doctor's expectant look, "Dad is busy and he said Mom was on a trip somewhere and he doesn't know when she'll be back, so it's lonely."

Kutner quickly realized the boy's mother had either left or was dead. "It's okay, my parents died when I was six. I was alone for three years until a family adopted me," he told his story, "you home alone a lot?" The doctor wondered if the child ever got into anything if he was left alone as often as it seemed. Kutner began to examine the small boy, taking extra care around his lips and mouth and noting that the inside of his cheeks were chewed-up as well as his gums, lips, and skin around his mouth.

"Depends on how much work Dad has to do," Cameron said, looking down. He bit down on his tongue and quickly hit himself upside the head, then paused and did it again. Kutner grabbed his hands and held him there, realizing how incredibly strong he was for a five-year-old. The boy squirmed and kicked out and tried to remove himself from Kutner's grip until he calmed down a few minutes later. Kutner worked his way through the exam, writing down notes detailing small bruises on the boy's face, teeth marks on his arms, hands, and fingers, and bruises on his shins. "Okay, that's all we have to do. Anything else you can tell me is wrong?" Kutner asked, trying again to pry into the little boy's life.

"No, I'm fine," he answered and started scratching viciously at his thigh. Kutner jumped in and grabbed the boy's hand and warned him that he was going to scratch through his skin, figuring he was trying to hurt himself. "Hey, Cameron, quit trying to hurt yourself. We're going to figure this out, okay? Until then, you can't try and get hurt," Kutner told him.

"I'm not trying, it itches!" the boy asserted.

[Line Break]

"So the kid's a little itchy. Symptomatic of a bug bite. Thanks for playing, Kutner," House rolled his eyes.

"Also another sign of kidney failure, along with his labored breathing and swelling ankles, which is also on his chart," Thirteen pointed out.

"Thanks, lesbia- oops, I'm sorry, did I let that slip?- I am a nephrologist, I know what the hell kidney failure looks like. What else did you find wrong with the patient?" House asked, flipping and spinning his cane.

"Small bite marks - looked like his own - littering his arms, hands, and stubbornly red fingers. Definitely chewed up the inside of his mouth and surrounding area. Some bruises on his shins, but I couldn't decide if they were self-inflicted or just come from playing too hard. Also, after I tried to talk more in-depth about his Dad, he began hitting himself on the side of his head and there was bruising there upon further inspection, indicating that's a habit," Kutner responded. He was worried about the child.

House erased "scarring around lips" and replaced it with "self-mutilation" on the board and added "swollen ankles" and "slightly labored breathing." The team popped off a few reasons for the self-mutilating behavior like autism, stress, and any one of a dozen developmental disabilities, until Kutner pointed out that the child seemed overly attentive and intelligent. Still, House recorded the possibilities on the board and was asking for reasons for the kidney failure when Foreman spoke up, "House, I think you have a visitor."

House sighed to himself, knowing who it was immediately. "When I get back, I want five new possibilities for what's making this kid sick," he instructed.

"What do you want, Wilson?" House snarled as soon as he was out of his team's earshot.

"House, you know we have to talk about this, or you have to talk about this. With someone. And not a hooker, an actual person that you're close to or a therapist," Wilson reasoned with his friend.

"Nope, don't feel like it," House responded like a child while the two men walked down the hall, seemingly to nowhere.

"House!" Wilson said firmly, trying to grab the diagnostician's attention. It worked. "What... what did your father do to you?"

"He touched me in the naughty place," the older doctor replied sarcastically, averting his eyes and trying, to no avail, to walk faster than his friend with two working legs.

Immediately concerned, Wilson asked, "did he? House... come on. Talk to someone about this."

"Jesus Christ, Wilson. I'm kidding. Find a sense of humor and a set of balls, then come discuss this with me. Meanwhile, I have a five-year-old with no kidneys who's trying to rip himself apart. Go away," House told the oncologist and then proceeded to limp off into the elevator. Getting quickly inside, House breathed a sigh of relief. "Survived the first line of questions," House thought to himself.

[Line Break]

"Huntington's disease?"

"Autistic kid, Dad doesn't know why he hurts himself, hits him to hopefully make him stop?"

"Well, that escalated quickly, Taub," House quipped at his duckling who'd made the most recent suggestion. "And he's five, and only just now showing muscle weakness and lack of bodily control, and Huntington's this advanced would leave him completely incoherent. You would know, right, Thirteen?" House was overly irritable again this afternoon. He rubbed at his leg and at the back of his head before biting again at his team, "Ideas! Go! This kid's going to die of kidney failure within a few days or weeks if nobody figures this out. What are we missing?"

Suddenly, everyone's pagers went off and the team went rushing towards the child's room, where a usually well-mannered Cameron was screaming obscenities at his father and gouging out his own eyes when he came close. The small, tan boy looked around with wild eyes at the doctors who had just come rushing into his room and sunk down farther into his bed before moaning, jamming a finger into his mouth, and screaming again. Kutner responded quickly once more and moved the boys hands away from his mouth while Foreman injected him with a sedative.

"Damn it, the kid wet the bed," Taub grumbled when he sat on the edge of the bed to bandage up his hands, hopefully to prevent further self-mutilation.

"It's alright, the kid obviously had some type of panic attack around his Dad, got scared, and wet himself. Don't blame him," Kutner scolded the whining doctor. However, when Foreman pulled back the boy's covers, took the gown off his limp body, and pulled off his underwear, there appeared to be sand-like crystals all over his lower extremities and the bed.

[Line Break]

"So, he got freaked out when Daddy got too close. Why now, not before?" House asked his team. He stared at the board, something just wasn't working here.

"Can't we talk about that later and stick to his physical health, like why he's having some type of kidney stone, for now?" Thirteen objected to House's opening line.

House was about to respond when Foreman piped up again with a smirk, "my, House, aren't you popular today. Looks like someone else is here to see you."

Sighing and leaving his team with the instruction to keep the father away from the child until further notice, or when abuse was officially ruled out, House limped out of the DDx room, feeling the day's strain on him. "Yes, Cuddles?"

Cuddy looked her most famous and fund-reaping doctor up and down and sighed. He seemed so strong, so unbreakable, like nothing had ever hurt him once. Then, she looked again and realized the creases on his forehead, the gray tinged hair, the way the years had damaged his still-impossibly-handsome face and understood that she should've been looking twice at him years ago. "Wilson told me." House's snicker dropped from his face and he hobbled away.

A/N: Leaving y'all on a cliffhanger. Review and tell me what you think! ;) And just to officially announce, I guess, I do have another story (or rather, series of one-shots) in the works right now, but will not be posting anything until the completion of Scars, which still has a good bit to go. :) I'm super excited for you guys to see that soon!

See you all next week, I will hopefully be updating right when I get home from vacation!